Officials in central Kenya vowed to press on with a controversial land distribution exercise on Tuesday despite an armed attack on five men last week. A gang carrying pangas and sticks set upon people driving to a land allocation event on Friday and burned their vehicle, said Josphat Kithumbu, a lands official for Embu county, which issued the title deeds. Britain forced local people off 44,000 acres (17,806 hectares) of land in Mwea, when it ruled Kenya as a settler colony. At independence, the Kenyan government took over the land but tenant farmers from local communities were never issued title deeds, said Japheth Nkanata of the National Land Commission, which was set up in 2012 to manage land issues. "Kirinyaga people will not trade off their birth-right in exchange for an unfair rushed solution to the dispute," she said in a statement on Friday, adding that there had not been public participation in the "unethical" land allocation process.

Source: The Star April 18, 2018 03:56 UTC